Mixed signals

I've been a bit of a wanker when it comes to the blog this week. I've been busy at work and at home.

At work, I had a huge project come my way with a tight turnaround time. In my office, you know a job is rush when we clock it's due date in hours instead of days. The good thing is all the information was supplied to me. All I had to do was put it all together, which only took a few hours. Binding the book together was an all-hands-on-deck situation, so I literally saw this job from concept to completion. I got pulled away at the last minute because there was a schedule change in the program. We didn't have time to reprint, so we had to put together an insert.

The day before, the client had asked me what they need to do to make the job easier next year. I told them flat out that they just needed to finalize all of the information a week sooner. Not that I mind the overtime...

Friday was an interesting day. I lost my cool with one of my bosses and he threatened to fire me as a result. He's the kind of guy that likes to push people's buttons because he thinks it motivates them. Well, he was pushing all of my buttons like he was playing the Track & Field Arcade Game; explaining to me what I need to do three time, each time more condescending than the next. He needed proofs right away, and all of them were outputting on the color printer as he was scolding me. I finally just snapped and yelled at him, "THEY'RE OUTPUTTING RIGHT NOW! I'LL HAVE THEM DONE IN TEN MINUTES!"

The rest of the day was spent only speaking to the man when I had to, and even then, I said no more than I had to. The ironic thing is my other boss told me he was giving me a raise to offset the rise in medical insurance costs. I almost got fired and got a raise in the same day, for completely different reasons.

In my five years at this job, I've been threatened to be fired three times including Friday. The first time was shortly after our film stripper, a man who had saved my ass several times and was a intregal part of our pre-press operations, had unexpectedly died. The second time was soon after my boss found out his teeneage daughter was pregnant. I began to wonder about Friday's episode because my boss was leaving early to attend a funeral. So, I guess you could say that the fragility of my job security is a matter of life or death.


Thursday night, Candy and her boyfriend came to town for a visit and they stayed over at my place...and slept on her/my couch. She kept worrying about Chuckles to the point that I'm starting to get worried. I'm now overly aware of how much he's scratching and that spot on his back that causes him to meow and lick his shoulder (which causes him to sound like a tauntaun from Empire Strikes Back), could be a tender area where he's been chewing and scratching too much. The concensus seems to be that he may have fleas, so I'm going to the store today to get him a flea collar.

A couple friends called me to see if they could come to my place to hang out that night. I explained to them that they were morte than welcome to come over, even though I had overnight guests. When I told them who those guests were (my ex-girlfriend and her new boyfriend) they almost said how weird that was, but then they said, "Well, this is Fritschie we're talking about."

This was one of those statements that could either be a great compliment, a completely innocuous statement or a massive insult...trapped between the three extremes. I know they didn't mean anything about it, but it did get me thinking. Have all of these women dumped my ass in the past because they knew I would be their friend afterwards? Did they decide to date me for the sole reason that they'd have an easy out?

Something to ponder, I guess.